


Sooner Or Later The Fire Dies Down

by Lilsciencequeen



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Could Be Canon, F/M, Guilt, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Injury, Season Prediction, post 4x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 14:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9388883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilsciencequeen/pseuds/Lilsciencequeen
Summary: “I’m sorry,” he said, watching her walk across the lab. He knew that he had messed up big time.“Fitz,” she said, spinning around to face him. “You told that this wouldn’t happen. That you had destroyed everything. Not uploaded her to your phone.”“But I wasn’t using that data Jemma. You know that, don’t you?” Because it was the truth, he hadn’t been using the data, he just couldn’t get rid of it, not after all the work that he had put into it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I was going to post this last night but A03 crashed on me and when I came back to it today, I did some heavy editing and added in the whole second section as I felt that it made everything flow a bit better. Title for this is from Anger by Sleeping at Last

“I’m sorry,” he said, watching her walk across the lab. He knew that he had messed up big time.

“Fitz,” she said, spinning around to face him. “You told that this wouldn’t happen. That you had destroyed everything. Not uploaded her to your phone.”

“But I wasn’t using that data Jemma. You know that, don’t you?” Because it was the truth, he hadn’t been using the data, he just couldn’t get rid of it, not after all the work that he had put into it.

She bit her lip. Then he continued. “Jemma, I never used that data, okay? I _never_ once used that data but I kept it.”

“Why?” she whispered, trying not to cry. “Why did you keep it?”

“We’re both scientists, yeah? And I didn’t… I didn’t want to lost it. Not after all the work that I put into it.”

She closed her eyes, nodding. “I understand Fitz. I completely understand… I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I don’t want you to get hurt with this. I can’t… I can’t afford to lose you, not again. Not after all we’ve been through. Losing you…” She shook her head, unable to finish what she had been saying.

He stepped forward, and then took another step until he was standing in front of her, and wrapped his arms around her. She sank into his embrace, and felt his hands run up and down her back in a stroking manner, as if to reassure her that it was okay, that he was here and she wasn’t going to lose him, not again.

He placed a kiss to the top of her forehead. “I thought we weren’t doing this anymore Fitz.”

“Doing what?”

She shrugged and looked up at him. “Keeping secrets.”

He lifted his hand, and cupped her cheek. “I know. But I won’t not anymore. I promise.”

She sighed.

“I just… I can’t lose you Jemma. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I know,” she whispered as he dipped his head down, and danced his lips across hers.

She returned the kiss, allowing herself to sink further into him, and she gave a frown once he pulled away. “If you want,” he began, “If you want I’ll delete it, all of AIDA’s files. If that’s what you want.”

Her forehead, pressed against his, moved up and down and she nodded. “Please Fitz. And I’m sorry. I know how much this all meant to you.” Then she dipped it down, allowing it to come to rest against the soft fabric of his shirt.

“S’okay.” He reached into his back pocket, sliding his phone out of it. Because she was right, after all. It was too dangerous to have these files on the phone, after all that had happened.

“We can start again,” she said as he did so.

He frowned. “We can?”

“Of course, you wanted me to help you create the LMD’s. And with a blank slate, we can do it. I think. You say you wanted to save lives, to protect people, we can do it.”

“You want to?” he asked, not wanting her to do anything that she didn’t want to.

She nodded. “I can see how much that this means to you Fitz. And you’re right, maybe, maybe something like this could be beneficial, it could save so many agent’s lives.”

He kissed her again. “You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to.”

“I do want to do this Fitz, but from a fresh. And just us two. No Radcliffe, no nothing.”

He nodded, then unlocked his phone and passed it to her after opening a file. “Here,” he said. “Anything about AIDA is saved here. And you, you can delete it.”

She nodded. And hit the screen, deleting everything about it. “There,” she whispered. “All gone. M’sorry.” She said the last part with her face pressed into his chest, slurring the words but she liked it there, in his embrace and it helped her. It helped let her know that this was real, that everything was real. That _he_ was real, just by the beat of his heart, thump thump thumping against her cheek.

He shook his head. “It’s okay.”

She pulled out of his embrace, and looked at her computer. “So, how are we going to do this?” She turned to him and smiled, and he stepped behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his head on top of hers as he looked at the screen.

“Leopold?” a voice called from outside the lab, a voice that was familiar.

A figure appeared in the doorway, and the young couple stared at each other in shock, because she couldn’t be standing there, she couldn’t be standing there.

Because AIDA was gone.

She couldn’t be standing there in the doorway to their lab. “Leopold. You deleted the files of your phone.”

Fitz frowned, staring between her and Jemma. He stepped forward, around Jemma and the desk as if to get a closer look at her. Of course she would know that the files were gone, she could hack and access anything, despite the measures he had taken. But still there was no reason as to why she should be standing there.

“Fitz?” Jemma asked. “What…” Her voice was cautious as if to warn him not to get any closer in case it were dangerous.

“I don’t… AIDA, how are you here? We destroyed you.”

The AI cast a glance of pure hatred at this, but it soon morphed away back into her natural expression. “I know. Radcliffe build a second model in case anything happened to me. The original me. He never told you about me, this model. But you’re a scientist Leopold. You should know that multiple tests need to be done.”

“You didn’t know about this?” Jemam asked, looking at him. Because it was evident from his expression that he _didn’t_ know about this. This second model. But it was Radcliffe they were talking about, so of course this would have happened. It was a wonder that they never thought about it before now.

He shook his head, and ran his hands through his hair. “No. We built… we built the one just. I had no idea… I had no idea he did this.”

“He wanted to keep me safe,” AIDA replied, the bitterness in her tone evident. “From some people.”

Her gaze turned to Jemma. “You wanted me gone.”

Jemma nodded, making her way around the desk also and facing off against AIDA. “I did. Because you were a threat, a danger. You know S.H.I.E.L.D., you know what we have to do those who we see as a threat.” AIDA stepped forward and nodded.

“We put them down.”

And everything that happened after that happened so fast that no one had time to stop it.

There was a series of three gunshots and AIDA left, her heels clicking on the floor after her.

Then Fitz realised what had happened.

Jemma was on the ground, clutching at her stomach, blood seeping through her fingers. Her breathing was slightly laboured and only getting worse, and whimpers of pain escaped her.

“Fitz,” she whispered, looking up at him. She looked confused, her eyes unfocused as if she were unsure of what had happened.

He slammed his hand down on the emergency button, sending red lights flashing and alarms blaring. “Jems,” he breathed, pulling her into his arms so that she leaned against him.

He pressed his hands to her stomach, at the wounds that were there, but the blood was seeping through them, leaking onto and running down the back of his hands. “Hey,” he called to her once he saw her eyes roll back in her head. “Hey Jemma, look at me, yeah?” She blinked up at him once, twice, three times and he prayed that she would be okay, at least until the medical team came.

“Fitz,” she whispered again, tears streaming down her face.

“It’s okay, Jems, I’m here.”

She looked up, and removing one hand from under his and reaching up, stroked his cheek, leaving bloody marks behind her trailing fingers. She tilted her head with some effort and kissed him, scared that it would be her last kiss. “I love you.”

Then her eyes fluttered shut.

***

Fitz watched her through the window of the medical bay, watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she slept. Her hair was fanned out around her as she did, the light chestnut against the white of the pillow giving the impression that she was something angelic.

She had made it through surgery, the medical team had arrived in time and where able to stem the bleeding and prevent any further damage that could occur as a result of the three bullets that AIDA had put into her.

It made him sick to think that had happened to her.

Something that he had created to protect, to help, had shot her.

And it was all his fault. If he hadn’t hidden it from Jemma, the LMD project, then maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

Maybe she wouldn’t be lying there.

Maybe…

Just maybe.

But those words weren’t going to change what had happened.

It was done, and now he would have to live with the fact that he had her blood on his hands, that he had hurt her.

He could see why AIDA had done it, that much had been obvious.

She knew the protocols for a threat, and what a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent was to do in those circumstances.

And she had seen Jemma as a threat, so had attempted to put her down. To protect herself. So she could survive.

AIDA had seen Jemma as the threat, and not the other way around. It made him sick to his stomach.

Shaking his head, he focused his attention back on Jemma, watching as she stared to stir, her eyelashes fluttering against her skin.

He turned and walked away before she fully came around.

He couldn’t be there with her, not anymore.

Not after he almost killed her.

She didn’t deserve someone like that.

Someone like him.

***

A number of days had passed, and Jemma was still recovering in medical. She had made it through surgery with little difficulties but she hated being trapped in medical.

It was boring and there was little to do, no one was allowing her to work while she recovered.

So she slept most of the time and it also allowed her body to cope with what had happened to it, as she knew her biology well enough to know that it had suffered a fair amount of trauma from three bullet wounds to the abdomen.

Fitz meanwhile spent most of his time in the lab, locking himself away and blaming himself for what had happened. Because it had been his fault. He had created AIDA, and she had shot her.

She had shot his best friend.

And it was awful, knowing that she was in pain because of what he had done.

“Fitz,” came Daisy’s voice one day as he was fiddling with some scrap metal. “She misses you. You’ve hardly been to see her.” There was something in her tone, something between disappointment and anger.

He looked up. “I know.” Tears lingered behind his blue eyes, threating to fall.

“Why?” she asked. She was shocked, they were a couple, they were closer than she thought anyone could be, and there he was, not even visiting her.

“Because it’s my fault she was hurt. If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t be lying there.”

“Fitz, she doesn’t care about that!”

“How do you know?”

“Because she told me! She’s lying there, alone, wondering what the hell she’s done wrong and why you aren’t visiting her!”

“Because I created AIDA, if I hadn’t then she wouldn’t be hurt. It’s my fault!”

“Yes, Fitz, you kinda fucked up creating AIDA and not telling her but it was Radcliffe who made her, and who knows, maybe if you hadn’t have helped, then AIDA might still have got corrupted and hurt Jemma. And making her read the Darkhold, not the best idea, but without it, you wouldn’t be here. You would be gone. And how would Jemma feel then? I don’t think she would ever have gotten over that. Because she loves you and you two still have each other, despite everything! You have each other!” Daisy was crying now, and a number of lab techs were watching, and wondering what was happened. “And don’t. Don’t ruin that Fitz. Please. Don’t… don’t ruin that.”

And with that, she was gone, wiping her eyes on her sleeves.

***

He took her advice and saw Jemma that afternoon, and apologised for everything, but Daisy had been right, Jemma didn’t care about AIDA, she understood what had happened couldn’t have been prevented.

And she had missed him, just like he had missed her, more than anything else.

They had spent all day discussing what had happened and where they could go from there, with Jemma insisting that it wasn’t his fault and that it had been something beyond both of their control and she was alive and that was all that mattered and nothing could ever break them apart, not after all that had happened and she loved him and she always would.

So it hadn’t taken him long to crawl into bed with her, and her to curl up next to him, lips dancing across his, where unlike their last kiss where she thought it could have been their last, this one was full of love and hope and promise.

Of a future spent together.

“Fitz,” she whispered sometime in the evening as it turned to night. She was curled up on the bed, him mirroring her position as he stroked her face, his knuckles gliding down her cheeks.

“Yeah?” He smiled at her, blue eyes twinkling and she felt her stomach twist, not full of pain as it had been for so many days now but full of butterflies. It was a pleasant sensation, something that always made her smile even larger than she had previously been. It was something that she had missed out in her teenage years, something that they had both missed out on, and now, now they were finally getting to experience it, and it was amazing.

“Do you maybe want to watch Doctor Who?”

Fitz nodded, then allowed himself to kiss her again. It had been so long since they watched Doctor Who together with all that had been happening. “’Course, why wouldn’t I?”

She smiled, and adjusted herself so she was lying against him now, her head on his chest.

He placed a kiss on her forehead, reaching for the remote, thinking, maybe, maybe things had gone wrong but now…

Now they were okay.

No, they were better than okay.

They were amazing.

His arms were wrapped around her, carefully not to hurt her anymore as she was still sensitive after being shot and surgery but still, to have her in his arms after he thought he would lose her again was something that was truly magical.

“Fitz?” Jemma asked, once he had taken some time to turn the television on. “Are you okay?”

“What? Yeah, yeah I’m okay. Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Just… just us. And how… Just how I love you.”

“I love you too Fitz.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how I feel about Fitz keeping that data on his phone, its all just a bit weird to me and I just have a gut feeling that AIDA would do anything to survive but she likes Fitz just too much to hurt him, and I hurt Jemma because Jemma has never fully liked her and wants her gone, which AIDA sees as a threat to her survival and she'll do anything to survive if that makes sense. Feel free to comment your ideas and thanks for checking out, hope you enjoyed.


End file.
